Wooden Phone Support for Bike

If you use your bike in a city, you know it happens to get lost when you go to a place you've never been before. It is then very annoying to stop and pull out your phone at each crossing to check if you're on the right way.

Here's the solution : this phone support will allow you to have your GPS just in front of you and not get lost again!

WARNING : The purpose of this device is not to text or browse facebook while cycling, as it is obviously dangerous and forbidden.

Still, it will allow you to see the incoming calls or texts, and then stop to answer them.

(English is not my native language, I'll try to be as clear as possible but don't hesitate to comment if a term is unclear or inappropriate.)

How does it work :

(Check the part names on picture 6 & 7 first)

The phone is firstly held by the vertical part, as it is a bit forced in the support (see step 1 for detailed explanations).

The little "spinning holders" on the side are also holding it firmly by applying a small pressure on the screen : there is a threaded rod glued in the wooden piece with a nut on the bottom, which allows to put pressure on the phone when you tighten the nut. This mechanism can be seen in the last picture. The nut is in fact a wing nut, so it can be tighten without any tool.

To summarize :

1. Make sure the spinning holders are loose, and rotate them to let your phone in

2. Put your phone on the support (picture 5)

3. Rotate back the spinning holders

4. Tighten them with the two wing nuts located on the back of the support

Your phone is then safe and won't be able to jump out of the support. Reverse the process to get your phone out.

Material needed :

- A few pieces of wood

- x2 Wooden screws

- x2 Bolts with wing nuts

- x2 Washers

- Strong glue

- Basic woodworking tools

Step 1: The Vertical Part

First of all, measure your phone's length precisely. This is important to make your phone fit in the support, as (ideally) your phone should be held properly just with this part of the support. In other words, the "notch" must be slightly smaller than your phone length, so it can be forced in and held correctly.

Start from a clean piece of timber big enough (as in picture 1), and work it the way you prefer to get the piece of picture 2.

I used a saw and some chisels as didn't have much tools around, but any other way will work as well.

(Sorry for the lack of pictures of the whole instructables by the way).

Step 2: Horizontal Part

Next step is the "horizontal part" composing the support.

This step is not very detailed but quite straightforward, the only point to take care of being the width of the part. It has to be wider than your phone, but precision is not very important here.

Indeed, the phone will be immobilized by the vertical part, so the horizontal part does not need to be at the exact width of your phone. In fact, the horizontal part is just here to support the little " spinning holders" added later (see step 4).

Concerning the horizontal part itself, it is composed of 3 different pieces (see picture 2), assembled with nails and glue. One hole must be drilled on each side (see picture 1) to fit two threaded rods - just make sure the holes are approximately centered.

Step 3: Spinning Holders

For the little "spinning holders", start by cutting a bevel on your wood plank (use a table saw if you have one) - see the drawing in picture 1 which details the process.

Cut then the plank to get two pieces similar to the one in picture 2.

- If you're using screws (like me, picture 3) start by cutting the head, and then cut it (if necessary) to the size you need.

- If you've got a threaded rod, just cut it to the appropriate size (which depends on the size of your previous parts).

Drill then your little wood piece to make the rod fit in (see picture 4 and 5), and glue it inside with strong glue.

Do this for the two wood pieces to get two "spinning holders".

NOTE : Gluing directly the threaded rod inside worked quite well for me, but I mainly chose this option because I was lacking of time. If you want to make sure the threaded rod won't rotate inside the wood piece, consider putting two nuts on top of the threaded rod (which will tighten each other). Make a hole in the wood piece slightly smaller than the size of the nuts, and force them in with glue applied on it. This should work much better as the hexagonal shape of the nuts will make the threaded rod less easily rotate inside the wood piece.

Step 4: Protective Pads

As the bottom of the spinning holders will be in direct contact with your phone screen, some kind of protection will be useful to avoid damaging your screen.

I simply used protective pads, usually put under furniture's feet.

Cut them to the appropriate size and glue them under your spinning holders. Use strong glue even if they're already self-adhesive to make sure they will stick properly.

Step 5: Sand and Oil

Sand all the pieces if you didn't do it before, and apply some oil to protect it and give it a nice finished look.

Step 6: Assembling the Parts

Now the time to assemble has come !

In order to fix the whole thing to the handlebar, I used the support of an old speedometer for bike. This is the black plastic part you can see on the pictures, which is basically just a ring (to fit on the handlebar) and a flat panel. The ring can be closed with a little tuning screw you can see on picture 2.

Make sure your two screws are long enough to hold the three parts together (horizontal, vertical, handlebar support), but not too long as they mustn't go all the way through.

Start then by assembling the horizontal part and the handlebar support (see picture 1).

Continue the assembly by adding the vertical part (picture 2), which has obviously to be perpendicular to the horizontal one.

Finally, I recommend you to glue two washers on the bottom of the horizontal part (see picture 2) to avoid the nut being in direct contact with the wood.

Add your two spinning holder to the assembly, and secure them with the two wing nuts (picture 3).

Congratulations, you have a fully functional phone support !

Note: On the first pictures the parts are not oiled because I assembled everything a first time to check the fit before disassembling again it for the oiling step. Anyway, I think you should oil them before assembly.

Step 7: Improvements : Solar/Wind/Dynamo Charger?

- As mentioned previously concerning the spinning holder : the rod inside the wood piece can be better fixed using two nuts (see end of step 4 for more details).

- As the main purpose of this support is to use your phone as a GPS, which makes your battery drop very quickly, some kind of charger would be useful. A little solar panel (picture 1) or a small wind turbine (picture 2) would be great, but I'm not sure of the efficiency of those options.

A more viable concept would be using a dynamo, using directly the power from the wheels (picture 3&4). Don't hesitate to post in the comments if you succeed doing such a thing ! I'll try to take the time to explore that option as well.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this instructables, and don't forget to vote for it in the wood contest if you liked it !